


All the horrors that (I promised you) I’d bring

by wildcursive



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Mentions of Memory Alteration, Scourger Essek AU, Spoilers for Episode 97, are there tons of introspection in it?, basically evil!Shadowgast AU, but it's in an alternate universe, is this another fic from Essek's POV?, mentions of physical and mental abuse, the answer is yes to both, very much essek-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-23 06:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23007040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildcursive/pseuds/wildcursive
Summary: Fortune’s favor is a spell that allows its user to tip the scales of fate just slightly in their favor in the right moment, by drawing on the power of potential timelines. Essek knows many a Dynasty mage that disregard the sheer power of this simple spell, but even he does not fully realize how crucial it has been in his own life, especially since he got immersed in the conspiracy that put two nations at war.Or five times Essek granted himself the ability to avoid a fatal mistake, five discarded timelines, and one time he was given a second chance to atone for his sins.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 30
Kudos: 128





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I have gone completely feral about our beautiful hotboi and Shadowgast after last episode, so here's another fic. It should come in three parts until Thursday, because apparently my new thing is posting something immediately before a new episode so that Matt can immediately and thoroughly disprove it. :D  
> I hope this isn't all over the place too much or too hard to follow. As usual, it's unbetaed. Nevertheless, enjoy! ^^

In Essek’s opinion, his tutors have always glossed over the potential of Fortune’s Favor as an incantation, always too focused on its relative uselessness in the day-to-day matters of a nation at peace that is content to remain blind and obedient, like sheep in their worship of a deity that might not even exist. Essek knows he is meant for more. A prodigy of dunamancy even before he is officially finished with his initial schooling, Essek can see even then that his tutors are confined by their blind faith and he is bound to become more powerful than every last one of them before he has even come of age. And he does, disregarding their flawed teachings and correcting the errors in the books they give him. 

And every day, even if it goes unused in the minutiae of courtly life, he grants himself Fortune’s Favor at least once, until the habit becomes ingrained as part of his preparation for any task. Essek knows it will be indispensable with the life he plans to lead, even if he could never have predicted exactly how much. 

~ one ~

_This is too reckless,_ Essek thinks, but there is already one Beacon stored in his pocket dimension, the spellbook that he usually preserves there now strapped securely to his belt under his mantle—and it is a very new mantle, because he is very newly appointed Shadowhand. 

It is too late to back down now though, he has already endangered his new position, his life, and his consecuted soul. Invisible, he descends further into the Darkshire vault—one of the most well-guarded places in the entirety of Xhorhas. It is a good thing that as Shadowhand he has intimate knowledge of the placement of guards and arcane defenses in all important places in the capital. 

_Now outside the capital too,_ he thinks, recalling the painstaking process of gathering information about the location and safekeeping of the Asarius Beacon, which, while intangible in every way while it stays in Essek's pocket dimension, but still just a gesture away from falling into his open hands, is already weighing on his conscience. 

He has come this far. He proceeds down the stairs, deeper into the vault. 

Finally, Essek descends into a long hallway, its walls lined with stone alcoves that hold memorials of members of all noble dens in Rosohna whose consecuted souls have been lost. He cannot see them yet, but Essek knows that at its very end, where the heavy doors to the main vault chamber stand closed, there are two high-ranking members of the Aurora Watch, stationed to guard the most valued object in the Dynasty. Essek also knows that he needs to hurry because the disappearance of the Asarius Beacon could be discovered at any moment and the alarm would be sounded first in all other Beacon repositories, such as the one where he is right now. 

_Lolth damn me,_ he curses inwardly in the next instant as, now able to both see and hear the guards, he witnesses them in what must be the moment they receive the message of the theft in Assarius and start muttering to each other in a panic, before deciding to open the heavy vault doors and confirm that the Beacon is still there. 

The opening is perfect and Essek quickens his pace to reach them before they manage to close the door again. Fortune’s favor proves crucial at that moment, because as he approaches, just about fifteen feet from where the guards stand, there is a piece of rock the size of a fist, chipped off from the nearby alcove. In his hurry, he is on the verge of accidentally kicking it, before being able to draw on the potential energy of the unfolding timeline and rewrite the moment, dexterously evading the obstacle. 

He stuns the guards seamlessly, retrieving the Beacon and heading to quickly send it off along with its twin and return before his absence is noted.

* * *

In the timeline he just managed to evade, the less fortunate Essek trips and kicks the rock, sending it loudly skittering a few feet forward towards the guards. 

“Did you hear that?” one of them asks.

“Who’s there?” the second demands and sends a dispelling field right in Essek’s direction, managing to catch him in the radius. 

Essek’s invisibility field dissipates and he stands now in full view of the guards, cursing under his breath.

“Shit, it’s the Shadowhand,” the first one says. “Stay there Thelyss, don’t move,” he continues, so disrespectful that Essek could have had him tried for the offense, was he not actually the traitor in this situation and just caught red-handed. 

Essek curses some more under his breath as he disappears from the vault’s underground hallway, using a short-range portal to cross the distance back to the surface. From there, he quickly finds a hiding spot and hurriedly draws a teleportation circle on the ground, the anchoring sigil for Martinet Ludinus Da’leth’s abode unfamiliar under his unpracticed fingers. 

His associates are unsurprisingly and almost fairly livid after Essek’s grandiose failure. Not only is he carrying just a single Beacon, but his very presence in the Empire after the premature reveal of his treachery puts the the whole plan in danger. Thankfully for the Masters of the Cerberus Assembly, the Bright Queen’s anger is hardly lessened by the failed second theft and the war is still declared. 

Unfortunately for Essek, he is alone, persecuted and almost powerless, at least where it comes to his ultimate goal in life. He has no place to conduct his experiments and no access to supplies. He has no allies with whom to trade information, no security of post to allow him to conduct his research in peace. Belatedly, he realizes he has no home of any kind to speak of.

Fortunately, there is an easy way out. 

Or so they make it seem.

“As you may be aware," Ludinus begins. "Master Ikithon is always interested in recruiting the brightest mages to be his students. I am sure your case will be special and you both will have much to learn from each other. But if you renounce the Kryn Dynasty and become a citizen of the Empire, student to Master Ikithon and collaborator in all of our magical research, dedicated to the cause completely, we are ready to offer you full sanctuary in exchange, Shadowhand-” the pause the Martinet makes to correct his mistake in address stings, even if Essek was never fond of the title in the short time he held it. “... my apologies, Lord Thelyss.”

Even as young and inexperienced as he is in his nine decades, Essek can see the trap set up for him, but he is also cornered and powerless. He prides himself on his knowledge first and foremost, and at the moment he knows that this is the way to go, if he ever hopes to get back on the path to his ultimate goal. 

Somewhere along the way he gets set on an entirely different path. There are arcane experiments in which he is strongly advised to participate, as if the freedom to deny Master Ikithon's wishes was ever granted. He walks out of the mage's study with bloodied hands and the skin of his arms mutilated. There are strategic discussions, in which Essek is given a seat to watch and listen, but never to be heard or seen. He is pacified by the monthly individual meetings with the Martinet, where they discuss the Assembly's latest advancements in Beacon research and Essek’s own small experiments, done with whatever time and resources he is able to scrape together over what seems like endless hours of training with little results at the Soltryce Academy. He always walks out of those meetings with his ultimate goal seemingly one step closer and then slowly, over the course of the next days realizes that there had been nothing of substance in the information the Martinet relayed, resolving to address the issue at the next meeting and then leaving it with the same false feeling of accomplishment that slowly decays. 

By the time he realizes how much his mind has been tampered with, Essek is already the leader of Master Ikithon's most elite unit, having replaced its one member that had proved deficient, and at present leading his new compatriots out of the main Thelyss estate, specks of his mother's blood still on his hands. He wonders for a moment whether there is a Beacon close enough now, whether he has cost her more than just the one life, just like he had for his father. 

As the three walk out and Eodwulf begins to inscribe the glyphs of the teleportation circle on the pavement in front of the estate, Essek has already dispensed with those thoughts. His parents, that third failed scourger, every civilian casualty, they are all simply stepping stones to the greater goal, a price to be paid for unlocking the secrets of the universe and keeping them safe.

As fully initiated leader of the elite unit, he finally gets full access to all Empire research on the Beacons and the time to contribute when he is not sent out on a mission. And the missions are many, and consuming, but Essek is not in a hurry, he will outlive all of the Assembly. Forcefully, if he has to.

Or so he thinks, until just a decade later. The war is about to end, with the Dynasty set to get its Beacons back (and Essek's death faked long ago, lest the Bright Queen demand his head as reparations) and the Assembly able to continue their research after discovering another one, when Master Ikithon calls him to his study. There is a mission for Essek, he says, possibly the last one he will ever need to lead, because after its success their research would no longer be endangered by anyone of anything. 

There is the group, the one that runs with Bren, the student Essek replaced, the Master explains. Essek saw a glimpse of them at their audience with the King, remembers the man with the red hair—Bren himself—the other human, brash and bold, dressed in the garb of an expositor of the Cobalt Soul, and the rest of their mismatched group made up of races more fitting to his old nation than to the Empire. They have found out about Pride’s Call and they are close to the Bright Queen, Master Ikithon says, they need to be taken out before they can find any proof to bring to her and interfere with the peace negotiations. Find them and eliminate them, are his orders, take out Bren first, lest he find any weakness in his former scourger companions to exploit. 

Essek has Astrid trace the group, as the most gifted with divination magics out of the three of them. Quickly she pinpoints the group’s location to Kamordah, near Mount Mentiri, and with a wave of Essek’s hand the three of them are there. The Mighty Nein, as they call themselves, are weakened after a battle, when Essek and his compatriots track them down, but they put on an admirable fight. Still, he is able to dispose of their main healer swiftly, the firbolg’s body crumpling as Essek compresses the gravitational fields around him. 

He remembers that he should have heeded Master Ikithon’s words to go after Bren first only then, when the man comes for him instead. He uses a simple spell, one Essek has treated with the same disregard that his teachers held for Fortune’s Favor. But any blade, even a fragile arcane dagger, made of barely held together rage and flame, is lethal when it comes for the heart. 

Their eyes meet as the man stabs him and Essek sees something reflected in the blue there, under the rage and the desperation caused by the firbolg’s death. Maybe it is something of Essek himself there, maybe it is simple pity from one mistreated product of the Soltryce Academy to another, or maybe it’s something more. 

He never gets to find out. 

  
  
~ two ~

With the Beacons safely handed off and Essek’s trustworthiness in front of the Bright Queen unquestioned, tensions between the Dynasty and the Empire escalated into a full-blown war. Its banal bouts of violence initially detracted both Essek and his co-conspirators from their important research, but also made their respective heads of state give them more space and freedom to experiment, anything to get a tactical advantage over the opponent. This has allowed Essek to be more frivolous with his covert excursions to the Empire, which he uses to get the most out of his deal with the Assembly. 

It all goes as well as might be expected. He knows they are trying to cheat him and they know he is trying to catch them in a lie, each side just waiting for the moment where the other will show their hand so they can ruin them—or him, in Essek’s case, as he has no collaborators on his own side, unlike the Empire archmages. 

It goes on for a decade, then another. They are coming to the end of a third, when Essek finds himself at the Vergessen Sanatorium for a hard-won meeting with Trent Ikithon. His interactions with the man have thankfully been very limited throughout the years, most of the exchange of meager information done through contact with the Martinet. But Trent, although not the main individual experimenting with the Beacons— that role is reserved for Ves Derogna—has more practical experience with them than Ludinus. So Essek has steeled himself for an uncomfortable experience, resolute in his decision to get more information from the Assembly than he has over the past few decades. 

The man is a snake, slippery and cold, and Essek wonders whether he would find a forked tongue there, if he looked directly into his mouth. They sit and talk for hours and Essek is given scrolls marred with diagrams and complex combinations of sigils, while listening to the human’s extensive explanations. And yet he is learning nothing, Trent’s explanations are carefully tailored, circular and tentative, a preamble that never grows into substance. Essek presses the matter at each opening he gets and the man, visibly recognizing his frustration, manages to evade the subject at hand with yet more dexterity each time. 

“So you are telling me that all you have found after years of experiments conducted by you personally, are just these contradictory suppositions?” he asks eventually, no longer able to stop his frustration from outwardly showing. “You do not have even a single piece of evidence nudging your judgement one way or another for at least one of them?”

“Well, you see-” the mage begins, but that is the moment that one of his students chooses to seemingly try to break down the door with their insistent knocking. 

Essek immediately assumes one of his Imperial disguises - a high elf dressed in the robes of the Cobalt Soul - as Ikithon waves the door open. 

A young human enters, completely ignoring Essek’s presence and instead hurriedly announcing something to his tutor, the entire message in Zemnian. Essek does not understand any of the words, but their urgent tone leads him to conclude there is a pressing matter at hand, likely a personal one for Ikithon. 

Message received, the archmage sends the other man away with a wave of the hand and turns to Essek. 

“My apologies, Shadowhand, but there is an urgent matter with one of my students that I must attend to.”

“This better not be a ploy to get rid of me, Trent,” he responds, allowing himself some recklessness in his tone and informal address, releasing some of his pent up frustrations. Besides...what is the human going to do about it really? “I will be back.”

“Of that I am sure, Master Thelyss. I look forward to our next meeting already.”

So Essek leaves the grounds of the Sanatorium, heading out into the surrounding forest on foot to find a secluded place to set his teleportation circle and, as a precaution, raising the pearl against his forehead and chanting the familiar incantation as he walks into the treeline. 

The need for the spell arises almost immediately. As he walks further in, Essek hears the rush of footsteps behind him and draws on the potentiality of a discarded timeline to find the right hiding spot so that whoever is approaching would not see him and start asking questions. His anonymity preserved as the stranger passes in a mad rush to somewhere, Essek quickly finds a patch of rocks on the ground big enough to accommodate his needs and teleports, frustrated, but undiscovered, back to Rosohna. 

* * *

In the alternate timeline he just discarded, Essek chooses the wrong side to step to in his search for a hiding spot and accidentally walks right into the path of the rushing figure, the individual colliding heavily into his back and sending them both sprawling on the forest floor. It is a short struggle for each of them to get their bearings, but they end up with the man— human, disheveled, unkempt, with long red hair, pale, clammy skin, and blue eyes that are cloudy with confusion and fear—hovering over Essek. 

“Get off of me before I scatter you into dust,” Essek growls.

“Please,” the man responds, immediately scrambling backwards. “You need to help me leave, they have- Master Ikithon… he will-”

“You are his student, the one he was having a problem with.”

“I used to be,” there is desperation in the man’s voice now as he half-lies on the ground propped up onto his elbows and breathing heavily. “I am nothing more than his prisoner now, I need you to get me out of here.”

Essek knows an opportunity when he sees one. 

“What do you know of his work then, of his experiments?” he asks, standing up and looming over the man now. 

“I was part of them, I know enough, I will share everything with you in exchange for your help.”

Essek is just desperate and exhausted enough of his dealings with the Cerberus Assembly to believe him. He draws the teleportation circle to his home in Rosohna, glad for the foresight to send his attendants away for the day. 

The man, Bren, needs a significant amount of time to adjust to life after over a decade of being held prisoner and robbed of his clarity of mind. But he recovers his sharpness of mind fast, faster than Essek would have expected and reveals a quick wit and impeccable memory, with a thirst for discovery and learning that threatens to rival Essek’s own. It is disappointing, but not surprising that he does not know much about his old tutor’s dunamantic research, considering how long he has been out of the loop of it, but he still offers Essek valuable information about the Assembly’s practices, shows him the marks on his arms and describes the strange pieces of stone used to inflict them, gives him insight on the way Ikithon operates. 

In turn, Essek teaches him dunamancy. The very basics at first, simple tricks used to manipulate gravity that pose no true threat, but serve Essek well as an evaluation of both Bren’s talent and his trustworthiness. And he shows plenty of both. He consumes book after book from Essek’s library, absorbing theory like a sponge, but always staying respectful of the boundaries Essek places for him in his research. They are boundaries that Essek slowly allows to crumble, first when it comes to the other man’s access to his books and then to Essek himself. They commiserate over their thirst for knowledge of course, but Essek is quite surprised when the more Bren opens up, the more he realizes their end goals lead to a similar place. He chips at the walls the human has constructed around himself too and finds out how deep the scars of Trent’s influence run, learns about Bren’s parents, talks about the death of his own father. He teaches Bren the spells that have to do with potentiality then, gives him Fortune’s Favor first and builds from there until there is nothing left to teach, until the man’s own spellbook is almost as thick as Essek’s own. 

They start considering incantations of their own design then, when there is no arcane knowledge at Essek’s access that they have not familiarized themselves with already. Bren takes the first steps in this endeavor with modifications to basic spells, altering them more in aesthetic than in functionality to suit his character better. The first one is a cat’s claw wreathed in shadowy flames, replacing the rudimentary humanoid hand from a mid level incantation. It greets Essek when he returns to the tower from his daily duties as Shadowhand late one evening and it looks exquisite.

“Congratulations, Bren,” he says instead of a greeting, looking at the man standing on the other side of the hallway. “I see you have been successful, this is wonderful. May I ask the reason for your choice, besides your affinity to flame?”

And of course, he has hopes what that answer may be. There has been something growing between them throughout the past year that Essek has been sheltering the man in his home, bringing him around Rosohna in disguise, teaching him and learning from him. They have become each other’s closest person, each other’s only friend, and Essek has wondered what else they could be to one another. 

And at that moment, he watches the man approach him, raising a pearl to his forehead, one given to him by Essek himself of course, in a motion they have practiced together countless times. Bren stops a foot in front of him, as close as propriety has always allowed them to stay, and Essek fancies that he can still see the faint silvery traces of dunamantic magic floating in front of his forehead as the other man judges the potential possible outcomes of whatever endeavor he is set on, before stepping even closer.

“I was hoping the shadowy influence would be obvious,” Bren finally answers, leaning in to take Essek’s face in his hands and kiss him. 

Their success in devising new spells is grand, but limited to the schools of magic outside dunamancy. Neither of them is satisfied with this of course and, drunk on their passion and power, and love, they devise a plan. Essek uses the resources available through his den to secure them an estate near the Menagerie Coast, a place where they can keep their anonymity and a hideout for after the next part of their plan is complete. That part too goes off without a hitch— except for the dozens, if not hundreds of lives lost in the destruction of the Halls of Erudition, but such things are of no interest to the two them once they have gained hold their prize— and soon they are settled in their new home. They are both considered dead in their respective homelands, donning disguises as “Desren Thane and Caleb Widogast” when they need to visit the nearby coastal villages for supplies. They have all of Essek’s equipment and literature at their disposal, and now there is also a Beacon of the Luxon at their fingertips to peruse to their heart’s desire. 

After that, it takes them a mere handful of years with their combined efforts to break the world. 

Bren is the one who manages it first. Essek comes out of his meditative state just before sunrise one day to find the man already awake next to him and watching him with a triumphant smile. 

"I did it, mein liebling," he says, running a hand down Essek's cheek and then reaching up to tangle it in his hair.

Essek already knows what he is referring to, but they have had so little success with even creating the glyphs for the spell so far, that he is speechless in his disbelief. 

“Tell me, what is the date, so I may gauge my success?” 

“The 28th of Thunsheer,” Essek responds raspily, heartbeat speeding up in anticipation of his beloved’s response. 

“It was midday three days from now when I performed the ritual,” Bren responds, an exuberant smile on his face as he leans even closer. “Tomorrow evening you will accidentally burn your hand on a candle while reaching for your glass of wine, take care that you don’t make the mistake in case this version of me is not there anymore to-.” 

Essek leans up to silence him with his own lips then, almost delirious in his love for the man. 

They manage to successfully recreate the ritual the day before Bren’s original success and this time Essek is thrust a few days into the past. They continue drawing on the Beacon’s power, soon realizing that their tampering with time is actually depleting it. Bren pleads with him to first go and undo the death of his parents then, both of them together, so that they are not separated by the change of events. They are invincible, they will simply acquire a new Beacon once this one is drained of its powers, he promises, and Essek agrees, because he has not been able to deny the man anything since the day he met him.

They modify the ritual to include the two of them, to allow them to appear as separate entities rather than simply send their consciousness back in time. They pour over the equations for months, checking and rechecking each other’s calculations until they are sure everything is in order. 

They still manage to get something wrong. 

The spell seems to work at first. They disappear from their shared home, as if simply teleporting, but their whole being is thrown back in time, not to a moment two decades back as they required, but to a point several centuries ago, before even the assault of Vasselheim by the Betrayer Gods. Their tampering weakens the Weave, tearing holes into it that leak magic, causing chaos and destruction, and that will ultimately stop the Prime Deities from sealing The Chained Oblivion and ending the war of the Calamity. 

But neither of them learns any of that. They appear, in the exact same space they left, but now in the middle of a crater created by their landing. Essek turns to look at Bren, still holding his hand, and sees the other man already looking at him with horror in his eyes.

There are specs of fire coming from behind- no from Bren himself, he realizes. The man is slowly disintegrating before his eyes. In his periphery Essek sees black smoke rising from his own robes and bitterly thinks of that damned tale of the time-traveling archmage that turned to dust.

He turns and reaches for Bren’s other hand, bringing him close. And together they go out in fire and smoke, with the whole world soon to follow. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this story and format works for anyone else besides me, the rest of it should be up very soon. Let me know what you think? Or find me on tumblr @aro-hawke if you want. :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A warning(?) that this chapter has none of that sweet sweet Shadowgast content and is way more Essek-centric and an exploration of him as the traitor, especially in the "true" timeline. I don't think canon Essek has been as shady as I portray him here, but going a bit darker was an idea that appealed to me and I hope you enjoy reading! The softer content is in the next chapter, I promise. :D

~ three ~

Essek never manages to get another meeting in person with Trent Ikithon, but is granted a significant amount of actually usable research information along the next several years through insistent persuasion in his communication with the Martinet. Eventually however, he is unable to deter the rest of the Dynasty’s spies from uncovering the location of at least one of the Beacons, so he instead does his best to get subtly involved in the preparations for the incursion on the Zauber Spire, planning to simply bring the information to his allies from the Assembly, so that they could repel the attack on their own. 

The Queen’s elation at the prospect of the return of one of her precious artifacts is palpable even underneath her stone-cold exterior, but so is her viciousness. The retrieval mission is already a delicate matter, with the Beacon kept so deep into enemy territory, but she still insists that its retrieval also be used to relay a message, an ultimatum, to the Empire. 

“They will return what is rightfully mine or witness my wrath,” she says, the white, eternal light in the Cathedral reflecting dangerously off her sharp teeth as she bares them with the declaration. 

The Queen picks her best, a deadly duo of echo knights whose names Essek does not care to remember, but whose precise and ruthless style of work he has witnessed personally. Rather than simply retrieving the Beacon, they are also tasked with planting an implosive charge in its place and detonating it to collapse the tower and hopefully destroy a significant amount of the Cerberus Assembly’s research in the process. 

Essek is watched too closely to manage any timely intervention and is only able to send off a message to the Martinet after the Queen’s agents have already embarked on their mission to the Empire. 

_“What?! I am on my way, but you come here and help, Thelyss, if you want to keep that title of yours and your life!”_ comes Ludinus’ angry reply and Essek has no choice but to comply. 

He teleports to the outskirts of Zadash and follows the echo knights, but not before granting himself Fortune’s Favor and making sure he is invisible. The explosive device they carry is one of Waccoh’s latest experimental pieces and thankfully will require them to stay in close range in order to set it off, so Essek knows the Beacon is still in Zadash, even if the Dynasty agents might have already managed to make the exchange.

He arrives at the Zauber Spire in short order and sneaks inside with more ease than he had expected. The pre-harvest gala that is currently happening nearby has left the place loosely guarded, just as Dynasty intelligence had suggested. Essek begins ascending the tower, unfamiliar with its layout and uncertain where the Beacon might be located, resolving to find a place where he might not be overheard by one of the handful of guards stationed inside and message Ludinus. It is not needed, as the man himself appears before him as he reaches the third floor of the tower. 

“Thelyss,” he hisses under his breath. There is a slight arcane glow to his eyes that must be the reason why Essek was not obscured from his vision. Belatedly, he notices a figure approaching behind the Martinet, another member of the Assembly he is familiar with but has not met before. They do not have time for official greetings.

“Take me to the Beacon. Now,” Essek demands. 

“The Beacon is safe. We just confirmed it is still in the vault,” the other archmage, Oremid Hass, says and he is looking directly at Essek too. 

“Your Beacon is likely to have been replaced with a device that will wipe out half of the Tri-Spire district.”

“And you did not think to warn us of this in your message?” Ludinus has never been so blatantly furious as Essek witnesses him now. 

“Hardly enough space to fit in all the information within 25 words, Martinet,” Essek responds lightly, enjoying the opportunity to rile up the man despite the urgency of the situation and his own fear and frustration twisting his insides. “Not when you so courteously asked me to come here quickly. Now then, lead me to your vault.”

The Beacon is stored on the same floor and Essek is quickly led back to the room that the two apparently just left. Or at least, it was stored there. The duplicate is visually indistinct from the real object, but Essek knows what tampering to look for in the subtle waves of dunamantic magic that it emits, Waccoh is not the most subtle of individuals after all. Essek does not need to say anything, his associates read the truth of the matter from the blank expression on his face.

“They are still nearby,” Essek tells them. "Find them, I can deal with this." 

No sooner have the other two mages left the room than Essek feels and then sees the decoy beginning to overload, its hidden mechanism triggered. It is only Fortune’s Favor that allows him to successfully channel the strongest gravity well he could muster around the artifact and then portal several hundred feet outside the tower to safety, before the now significantly reduced blast manages to destroy the floor he was just on and damage the foundation of the tower. Essek’s magic is the only thing now keeping the upper two thirds of it from completely collapsing over the adjacent buildings. 

Around the now leaning tower, he sees the four figures of the echo knights and his Assembly accomplices soaring through the air and trading spells in a heated battle. His compatriots are looking for the moment when they will be obscured from their opponents by the side of the tower and will be able to teleport back to Rosohna without their incantation being countered and Essek does not trust the Empire mages to deny them that opportunity. So he teleports back to the side of the tower, now close enough to act.

The thing about the means of flight employed by the Assembly and the magic that the echo knights use to soar through the air, is that the former is a transmutive incantation that magically likens an individual to a creature of flight, despite not actually changing their appearance. If one were to dispel it, the caster would simply reapply the effect on themself mid-air, if they had the time. In contrast, the Dynasty mages use dunamancy to manipulate gravitational waves and if a stronger opponent were to exert their own power to override one’s control over gravity, there would be no way to counteract that assault. 

Essek follows one of the echo knights’ trajectory with his eyes. He is the taller an lankier of the two, who Essek has observed is more patient and precise with his spells and who he deems the bigger threat at the moment. He watches as the man soars through the air, almost to the top of the tower, and right then pulls the figurative rug out from under him, revoking his control over gravity that has been keeping him aloft and channeling just a bit more of his power to accelerate the velocity with which he plummets to the ground. 

The man falls on his back with a sickening thud just a couple of dozen feet away from Essek, who immediately turns his back to him, striding into the shadows, hands already moving in the gestures of a long-distance teleportation spell. He has tipped the scales of the battle to the best of his ability and now has to leave before his presence is noted. 

* * *

It is a cosmic irony that the discarded timeline is the one in which the Beacon remains secure in the hands of the Empire. In it, Essek commits a minor mistake in the conjuring of the gravitational well and it has barely any effect on the device, whose destructive power was very much underestimated by professor Waccoh, as it turns out. It causes the whole Spire to fold in on itself and crumble, taking Essek and all of its other occupants with it to annihilation. The implosion produces a secondary burst outward that hits the two pairs of mages locked into battle, hurtling them far into the air in all directions, and destroys several of the structures closest to the tower. The echo knights are disabled in their fall and easily discovered by the fast-assembled members of the city watch. The Martinet and Headmaster Hass sustain major injuries, but are expected to recover fully. The Beacon is retrieved. 

It never falls into the hands of a budding group of adventurers known as the Mighty Nein. Months later, they still travel into the heart of Xhorhas to save a loved one, but when their negotiations with the Queen go awry they have no bargaining chip to use and are thrown into the Dungeons of Penance and later executed after a failed attempt to break out. 

Years later, when the Empire embarks on its campaign to conquer the rest of the continent, its forces strengthened by means of dunamantic enhancements, it seems to have been inevitable. “Well, there was never anyone who could have stopped them anyway,” everyone says.

~ four ~

He should have known not to trust even the most powerful mages of the Cerberus Assembly to carry out a job that Essek should have seen finished himself. The Beacon, although not retrieved by the Dynasty, ends up lost to either side, as if swallowed by the earth itself. 

At least that is what the Martinet tells him. Essek is not disinclined to believe that the Beacon was secretly recovered by the Assembly, and he is being cheated in yet another way. Until almost five months after the attack, when a ragtag group of Empire mercenaries barges into the Bright Queen’s Cathedral and under duress presents her with the stolen artifact. Essek immediately knows he needs to get close and find out as much as he can about them, because this seemingly incompetent bunch have just become the biggest threat to his life’s work. 

Fortunately, the Queen intends for him to be the _Mighty Nein’s— what a ridiculous moniker—_ new caretaker when it comes to their meanderings through Rosohna, beginning with an excursion to the Dungeon’s of Penance to visit the prisoner that has led them this far into the Dynasty’s lands. Now the group suddenly becomes the key to solving Essek’s problems, just their appearance making the halfling immediately divulge every secret that a week of questioning and… subtle persuasion have not managed to extract. 

So Essek spends the next while carefully balancing between keeping the group close where they can be of use and subtly trying to detract them from getting involved with matters relating to the Empire. It takes him entirely too long to find out that the cult business they have been distracted with is yet another hanging thread between the Bright Queen’s court and the Cerberus Assembly, and it inadvertently leads them to information of an attack that allows Kryn forces to capture a scourger. 

The woman is of no direct threat to him, she would not know about his involvement with the Assembly, Essek reasons. And still, he directs his subordinates to begin interrogation without his involvement, manages to keep away from that specific cell for over a day, until even the Mighty Nein have had a chance to question the prisoner. It is after that visit is granted that Essek realizes he cannot delay his involvement anymore, lest his favor with the Bright Queen be replaced by suspicion. 

“I know your voice,” she rasps almost inaudibly in response to his haughty greeting, looking up at him through tresses of greasy hair matted with her own blood. 

Essek immediately looks back towards the guard stationed at the end of the hallway. They thankfully seem to be out of earshot and none the wiser, but their presence means that Essek cannot permanently silence the prisoner right then and there.

“I heard it once coming from my Master’s study,” she continues. “You were in disguise when I came in, but it was you, I know,” she grins at the end of the sentence, revealing several missing teeth. 

“What do you want,” Essek hisses in reply. 

“I have important information I need to relay to Master Ikithon. You will help me escape.”

“You are insane. Give me the information and I will relay it to him.” 

But the scourger is unyielding and Essek remains secretly at her mercy. Thankfully, the Mighty Nein’s interest in postponing her execution gives him a chance to cover for his treachery. They hatch the plan together: the group will come in to question her again whenever they return from their excursion to Uthodurn and the same evening she will flee, making any suspicion about her escape fall on them first. Essek does not even need to do much, just loosen a single rung on the chain that binds her wrists, she says, and then to bring them to her. She will do the rest. 

Why he keeps putting his trust in these lying Assembly dogs, he does not know. 

He has no choice but to intervene, as the scourger uses the piece of metal from the chain, now sharpened to a blade-like edge, to stab Caleb in the side of the neck. But there is also something else to his reaction there, a second layer of franticness that he will need to unravel later. At the moment, his first priority is not to give the scourger any chance to expose him. This is where fortune is in his favor, his spell taking hold of the woman before she can speak, silencing her forever just a few moments later. 

* * *

In the other timeline, where the balance of fates is not in Essek’s favor, the scourger manages to partly resist the effects of his spell. 

“He will kill me, but he is a traitor to his people too, just like you, Bren,” she manages to utter through choking breaths before her body is lifted off the ground and crushed in Essek's arcane grasp. He sees Caleb’s eyes widen and knows the human is not the only one among the group around him to have figured out what she meant. He makes a second mistake.

“Guards,” he calls. “Arrest the members of the Mighty Nein for attempting to aid a prisoner’s escape.”

The guards, although hesitant, do not disobey and begin ushering the whole group into the next cell. It is no matter, the guards can be easily persuaded to Essek’s side, with or without the use of arcane means. His favor with the Queen is also too strong, the product of decades of diligent service, to be destroyed by the word of a group of outsiders, even if they have proved advantageous allies to her in the war. 

The Mighty Nein are still rattled by their friend’s injury and the scourger’s revelation, and at Caduceus’ quiet urging allow themselves to be led behind the bars. Essek knows they are already hatching a daring escape plan, but he will be there to stop them. 

“What the fuck man,” Beauregard yells at him as the guards lock the cell and turn to follow him out. 

Essek quashes the pang of guilt growing in his chest. It is a waste, these people have been genuinely likeable and friendly, but sacrifices must always be made and he cannot lose sight of his ultimate goal. Perhaps this reminder was needed. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey friends, thank you so much for the wonderful response to the first chapter. I hope the conclusion to this story lives up to your expectations of it. I am posting chapters two and three together so make sure you read them both!

~ five ~

It has been almost two months since the scourger’s death. The Mighty Nein have spent the majority of that time away, but they still stayed in Rosohna long enough and bothered Essek with plenty of personal questions and transportation requests, their presence persistent enough to make him reflect on the unfamiliar fright he felt in that cell. 

Of course, he was mostly afraid of his secret dealings being discovered and his life’s work being ruined. But soon Essek realizes how much his fear was amplified by the possibility of the Mighty Nein specifically uncovering his treachery. Because, for all it’s worth, this mismatched group of brash individuals has shown him kindness and camaraderie when they could have chosen to simply stick to the cold courtesy between allies. But while Essek has lied to them about himself plenty, they are the first people in as long as he can remember that seem to like the parts of him that he offers in complete truthfulness. It is foolish, but he lets a small seed of hope blossom in his chest, hope that soon the Dynasty and the Empire will declare peace and everyone will remain none the wiser to the plot orchestrated between him and the Assembly.

There is also the matter of one specific member of the Mighty Nein. As Essek thinks back to the day of scourger's death, he keeps flashing back to the moment she lunged at Caleb, to the violent spray of his blood and the uniquely acute panic he had felt in that moment, solely concerned for the human’s well-being. There has never been a person like him in Essek’s life, so similar to him in his passion for knowledge and understanding and yet so different in origin and approach. They are almost mirror images of each other and as he spends more time with the man, the picture only grows more complete. That afternoon, after they have left the cell and he has agreed to teach the man yet more dunamantic incantations, Essek realizes he is no longer doing it simply to accrue future favor. There is affection there that spurs him. It is a dangerous emotion, but he has long ago given in to his recklessness, or he would have never stolen his own people’s most precious possession. 

Instead of diminishing over their month-long absence, Essek’s ill-advised feelings for the Mighty Nein only seem to amplify. He almost forgets to grant himself Fortune's Favor when he heads to their Den after their long-awaited return to Rosohna, so much have they chipped at his defenses. But he does it at the last moment, raising the pearl to his forehead and distractedly chanting the spell's incantation while walking down the hallway to the front door of his estate. 

They ask to see the Taskhand of course and it is dangerous for Essek, Tasithar is the last step to completing his deal with the Assembly. But refusing them the chance would make them even more suspicious, so Essek steels himself and leads them once again into the dungeons. 

It is not a singular decision or act that fortune defines for him this time. Instead he feels like he is drawing on a thin stream of potential energy throughout his whole interaction with the Nein, a subtle current that smooths over the jagged edges of the guilt growing in his chest and gentles his anxious responses so that they do not raise suspicion. It is not perfect, but it is enough, he thinks later, when Jester sends him yet another intrusive but not suspicious message and the Mighty Nein open their home—the one he gifted them with completely impure intentions—to him.

* * *

In the timeline where he only managed to arouse more suspicion rather than quell it, Essek is also invited to the Mighty Nein’s abode. Jester’s message is still inevitably cheerful, easing his anxiousness about their last interaction, but it also promises information of great interest to him. And Essek, having had no reason so far not to do so, trusts in the Nein’s sincerity and even secretly relishes the excuse to spend more time in their company. 

He imagines that the betrayal he feels when his footsteps—because they have told him he does not need to float in their presence, to prove himself—activate the suppression sigil on the floor, is similar to what they all felt when he lied to their faces about the Taskhand. The wind chimes on the front door are still ringing as Essek feels the flow of his magic cut off fully and the sound drives a startled hysterical laugh out of him. 

They all look so angry at him, even Jester and Caduceus who have always seemed able to find positivity and peace in any situation. He does not even dare to look at Caleb. 

Their questions start then, Beauregard- no, Expositor Lionett leading the charge, and Essek stands there with his back ramrod straight and his hands balled into fists at his sides. He says nothing, staring sightlessly at the lines of the arcane circle he is imprisoned in, mind reeling. 

It cannot end like this. 

And it does not. For all his arcane prowess, Caleb is still not close enough to Essek’s level of mastery and there is a weakness in his spell that is exploitable. So Essek withstands the long barrage of questions in silence, patiently channeling the tiny trickle of power he can access until he is able to accrue enough. 

“Have you nothing to say for yourself?” Fjord asks after the questions and discussions between other members of the Nein have tapered off, and there is less anger and so much hurt in his voice. They are pleading with him, Essek realizes. 

“I’m sorry,” he finally responds, casting forth the shock wave, sending all of them flying back, colliding into the splintering furniture and cracked walls. 

He teleports away. Finds a temporary hideout in an empty villa at the outer borders of Xhorhas that belongs to one of his aunts. He plans to relocate to Tal’dorei soon, where neither the Dynasty nor the Empire will be able to reach him. 

But the Mighty Nein belong to neither side. When they track him down—because of course they would be the only ones able to manage it, despite all precautions Essek has taken—it is purely in favor of their own interests. He has to be stopped, they say, no longer asking, just ready to act. Only then does Essek notice that there are only six of them present. Jester is missing.

She was too close to the shock wave, is the only explanation Essek gets, but the fury in Beauregard’s voice tells him all he needs to know. 

When Caleb ends his life this time, it is from a distance. Essek wishes he could have met his eyes one last time. 

~ nein ~

It is ridiculous. Essek is distraught over the Mighy Nein’s sudden appearance in Nicodranas, rattled by the conversation with Ludinus below deck, after showing his whole hand with the admission how much he cares for them, and so, so anxious because he hates formal functions of all kinds. So he has good reasons, but still no good excuse for the fact that he forgets about Fortune's Favor.

Had he cast it, he might have realized his drink smelled strange after Nott had poisoned it, might have given himself the extra moment needed to evade Caleb's hands as they clasped the manacles over his wrists, might have steeled his mind if he knew Caduceus' spell was coming. Any of those moments prevented might have been enough to keep his resolve whole, might have not let him give in to the need to be heard, to be wanted, to be part of something bigger than himself for the first time out of love, not out of a need for power. 

Fortune favors the bold and Essek has always been a coward. 

So he sits below decks on the Ball Eater, feeling his cloak catch on the unsanded wood of the crate he is sitting on, threads of the delicate material unraveling every time he shifts uncomfortably under the gaze of these people who he dared call friends. He is his own punishment, Essek tells them, but that is also a lie. The hurt in their eyes, the quiet judgement, there is no harsher punishment than that. 

It feels like forgiveness, when Caleb falls to his knees to look at him, but Essek cannot accept it, tries to evade the man, even when he holds Essek’s face so close to his own that their breaths meld into one another as he speaks. It feels like a blessing when Caleb’s lips come to his forehead and something in him finally cracks in half. Jester’s hand over his, the warmth of everyone else’s presence, they all put him back together and Essek finally gives himself over to them completely—to their side and their cause, whatever it may be. 

* * *

In an alternate timeline the negotiations might have gone without a hitch, with the Mighty Nein still considering him a friend and unaware of his betrayal. Essek might have received the information he was promised, might have let the thirst for power corrupt him slowly over decades and centuries until another band of intrepid adventurers that would remind him so much of his old friends came to stop him. 

But this is Essek’s present, his truth. He works with the Mighty Nein now... he is one of them. Together they travel to the negotiations, somehow managing to keep their alliance under the radar of the Assembly, and sign a peace treaty. Then they begin to plot against all of Essek’s former accomplices. It is not in the favor of the Kryn Dynasty and the Queen who claims ownership over all Beacons, not for the Empire, or even in the interest of furthering arcane research for noble purposes that Essek and Caleb might claim. 

The Mighty Nein may not be the heroic types, but they care about people, about all those people who do not get a say in the declaration of a war or in the ruling of a nation despite being the ones it runs on. Most importantly, they care about each other. And maybe they are all a little selfish, because they fuck with people unnecessarily and take what they want if it is not offered, but they keep Essek in line too. He is not truly redeemable and he could never atone for his sins completely, too many have been hurt for that. But now as one of them he can at least do _something,_ without the constraints of sacrilege the Dynasty keeps so tightly around its people or the yoke of the Assembly and the secrets they hold over him.

Essek does not forget about Fortune’s Favor again, he grants it to his friends now too. But there is still that bead of hope lodged in his chest, the one conveyed upon him with the touch of Caleb’s lips. He knows it is not true magic, it cannot help him draw on a potentiality to choose the best outcome, but he fancies it is real and he is saving it for a special occasion. 

In so, so many alternate timelines Essek is able to acquire a Beacon and keep it for himself, his research and the power he acquires eventually breaking the world in one manner or another. In this one, he holds the Beacon uncovered in Pride’s Hall in his hands, giddy with the adrenaline of an unlikely eight-person heist accomplished successfully. He teleports them all back to the Xhorhaus, still elated by the success, not even considering the prospects of what he could accomplish with the artifact at his fingertips like this. He does not fight Beauregard when she reaches to take it from him and put it in safe storage. 

“They might allow us some time with it for research, provided we don’t get carried away,” comes Caleb’s voice from his side and Essek realizes they have been left alone in the library, both of them still standing over the teleportation sigil while everyone else has already gone off to unpack and rest after the mission. 

There is a twinkle of amusement in the human’s eyes and Essek feels the corners of his own lips lift up in answer. They still have Ikithon and the Martinet, and all of their accomplices to deal with, but this has been a grand victory and Essek fancies that he can feel that bead of hope in his chest again, as small as the pearl he always carries, but suddenly expanding as he takes the two steps—and it is always steps nowadays—needed to cross the distance between him and Caleb. He is not under the effects of Fortune’s Favor now, he needed it during the mission, so he cannot draw on the possible outcomes of the moment to choose the best one, but Essek thinks about the blessing Caleb bestowed upon him all those months ago and, as he leans to take the wizard’s face in his hands and bring him closer, he simply hopes this is it. 

In an alternate timeline they might have been granted more time together than they will have in this one, or maybe more power to be gained through research, more good to do. But this is what they are given, they have their friends, each other, this moment, and all the ones that will come after it, whatever they may be. 

That is enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end, eyyy! I hope you enjoyed this story, I think it's the first chaptered one I manage to complete (but I will finish the time loop Shadowgast fic too, I promise :D).  
> Let me know what you thought, comments and kudos are love! As always, you can find me [@aro-hawke](http://aro-hawke.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.


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